Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Mordred
TWO WEEKS LATER
It was the hottest summer solstice anyone could remember.
Mordred was already in a violent mood before Oryane had summoned him to court.
Now that he was here, seated at a table overflowing with food when Camelot’s commonfolk had but the barest of rations thanks to the drought, he only felt more furious.
“You seem unusually distracted,” Oryane observed, placing a small, globe-like fruit between her teeth. She looked like she could have stepped from one of the silk tapestries adorning the walls at her back, all excess and glamour and death.
“Does this court have anything to do with the drought?” Mordred asked, fixing the King’s Councilor with a hard stare. “You already sent a courier into Arthur’s bedchambers.”
Oryane placed one hand on her chest in genteel shock. “Do you believe your High King would even have the foresight to use a natural-appearing disaster to weaken Camelot?” she asked sweetly.
Mordred clenched his teeth. “No, but you certainly would.”
She held up both ring-festooned hands, her wide sleeves rippling.
At least it was cooler beneath the hill.
“Mordred, you know the dynasty I come from,” she said.
“My ancestors chose to stay with the Morrigan, to remain in these lands and live beside mortals. It should go without saying I fought Ragrshydan on his decision to send the courier. But he is the king. I am not.”
Mordred crossed his arms, holding her gaze. He said nothing. Oryane glanced at the Eyes guarding the door, who had their backs to the changeling and the advisor. Then the guile slipped from her face, leaving something more honest in its stead. Startlingly, it reminded him of Morgana.
“No,” she said quietly. “No, Mordred. Arthur’s bloody sorcerer awakes with a godsdamn belly ache and wants to blame us. I would move much slower. Use their short lives and even shorter memories against them.”
Mordred sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. His instincts told him to believe her, but the times were too dangerous to make such a snap judgment. “Why am I here?” he asked instead.
“Oh, come now, child,” Oryane replied, rolling her pale eyes. “Morgana has returned. She has been in Camelot for barely two weeks, and already we can feel her magic.”
“If Morgana wanted to destroy the High Court, I imagine she would have damn well figured out how by now,” Mordred replied bitingly. He raked a hand through his hair as the advisor leaned forward onto the table, watching him. “She is here because she hates Merlin just as much as we do.”
“We?” Oryane echoed.
He took a deep inhale instead of punching her. “You. Me. The Fair Folk,” he said. “It is exhausting to do as you are told, day in and day out, often to your own detriment, and then be constantly subject to such suspicions.”
“If you were not doing very well, I would not be suspicious,” Oryane said, her mouth curving into a smile. It did not meet her eyes. She made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. “Morgana hates Merlin, yes, but she also hates the High Court.”
“Can you blame her?” Mordred scoffed.
Her eyes crept back to his. For a long moment, she did not speak. And then she let out an exhale, steepling her hands. “No,” Oryane finally said. “No. I suppose I cannot. It is a marvel she agreed to raise you at all.”
“It is only because the Morrigan asked her,” he retorted.
“I require regular insights into Morgana’s movements, particularly as they clash or align with Merlin’s,” Oryane announced instead of replying to what he had said.
“There are two mortals powerful enough to pose a true existential threat to our people. And now they are both just beyond our door, sleeping within the walls of our old seat of power.”
“Fine,” Mordred replied, confident that Morgana already knew the High Court would make such a demand. It would pain her, isolate her, but she would obscure her movements from him. “Do recall that she hates the man who took that seat of power from you.”
Oryane’s mouth twisted. She wrapped her fingers around the stem of her goblet but did not take a sip. “Uther was not special,” she said after a few too many beats. “He was a brute in the right place at the right time, and with iron, no less.”
Mordred dragged his hand through his hair, looking up at Oryane and wondering whether he could ask the question he already knew his High King had no interest in answering.
“Oryane,” he began. “How did Merlin come by Caledfwlch? And how did he manage to twist it so beyond its nature that a mortal man might wield it?”
“Mordred,” Oryane said with disdain, looking down her long, thin nose at him. “I am hardly at leisure to discuss such matters with you. In fact, I do think I have had enough of you for the day. You stink of mortals.”
With that, Oryane stood, unfolding to her full height. He bit his tongue and followed, watching her closely; unlike Ragrshydan, she rarely shut Mordred down entirely.
He rolled up the sleeves of his tunic in preparation for heading back out into the heat.
Oryane positioned her body to break the Eyes’ sightline to the table, were either to turn around, and conjured an ordinary-looking linen bag.
Wordlessly, she began to pack into it apples, berries, and loaves of bread from the table, muttering an incantation all the while.
He watched her, brow furrowed, trying to listen to the Threads. To his surprise, Mordred realized she was removing all the magic from the food, anything that might harm or bewitch a mortal. Without looking at him, she shoved the bag into his arms, where it immediately blinked out of sight.
“I will escort him to the door,” Oryane declared to the Eyes, her demeanor all haughty power.
Mordred dared not speak a word as he followed her through the halls of the hill and back to the faerie door at the mouth of the underground city.
When they arrived at the entry chamber, she put one hand on his forearm, slowing his pace. “Has Merlin found the gate?” Oryane asked quietly. “In the northwestern wall?”
“No, not as far as I know,” Mordred replied. “Is that how the courier got in? I thought it was only accessible by someone who had recently left the citadel through it.”
“That is not how the courier got in,” Oryane said with a laugh, as if the matter was incredibly silly. Mordred bristled. But then she turned and looked at him just as they arrived in the middle of the chamber. “But it might be how you get out.”
He looked at her, not understanding.
Her fingers closed harder around his forearm. “My goddess made you,” she whispered, her gaze boring into his. “Her lover died to create you. You are strong enough to take this court back from Ragrshydan. I will not see you perish on the field of some mortal battle.”
Mordred only remembered at the last moment that the Eyes guarding the door could see them, if not hear them. He held himself steady even though his mind stumbled. “Councilor, you know that is what I was made for,” he said slowly. “You know what must come to pass if the next Age is to be born.”
She smiled at him, all that sudden fierceness gone in favor of her usual aloofness. “Bring me tidings of Morgana,” she said, louder now, pulling him toward the door. “We can hope she and Merlin tear each other apart. I do hate getting my hands dirty.”
Without another word, she shoved Mordred through the faerie door.
He barely had time to send his magic reaching for the northwestern woods of Camelot, nearly lingering too long in the place that was not a place within the door.
At the last moment, he felt the Threads catch, and the loamy forest earth was beneath his feet.
The working on the pouch of food disappeared.
He leaned against a parched oak tree and tried to get his thoughts together.
A deep urge rose in him to discuss it all with Guinevere. With Morgana.
With Nyneve, the mortal girl he was probably in love with, who did not seem to care whether he lived or died.
“Fuck,” the changeling spat, pinching the bridge of his nose.
The sack of food in his hands offered him a direction, and a useful one at that, so Mordred began hiking through the woods to reach the villages that prostrated themselves at Camelot’s feet.
The drought had hit these communities the hardest. Though Arthur had scaled back the solstice feast, he had not agreed to eliminate it completely, which frustrated Mordred to no end and genuinely enraged Guinevere.
With a sigh, he shifted the weight of the large bag. Since that evening in the study, just before Morgana’s ceremony, he had barely seen Arthur in private, let alone conversed in such an open, direct way that might indicate the king’s plans.
It was only a quarter-hour or so walk to the villages, but by the time Mordred emerged onto the dusty old Roman road, he was drenched in sweat.
Though the sun hovered just above the horizon tauntingly, he could not wait for sunset.
Instead, he trudged down into the main square that held the markets and craftspeople who served all the surrounding hamlets.
As he came up over the hill, he was surprised to find a sea of people out in the heat, ringed in by all-too-familiar brown cloaks.
“It never ends,” Mordred muttered to himself, descending the hill.
He hefted the food to his left shoulder so his sword arm was free.
Though the knight could fight just as well with either hand, he feigned the typical preference for his right.
He only switched to his left when he was fatigued, which was rare.